When the former Los Angeles Theatre Center company was in its heyday in the late '80s, the LATC lobby was famous as a hangout where multicultural mingling took place on a regular basis. The next four months promise to bring back some of that ferment. It will be the busiest chunk of time at LATC since the building's resident company folded in 1991, according to LATC business manager Lee Sweet.

An even $3 million in cultural grants from the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts will be announced today by Mayor Tom Bradley and City Councilman Joel Wachs, highlighting a $10.3-million 1992-93 Cultural Affairs Department budget that goes into effect Wednesday.

L.A. Theatre Works and Beyond Baroque, two Westside arts organizations, are in a deadlock over their use of space in the old Venice City Hall, which is owned by the City of Los Angeles. The nonprofit Beyond Baroque library and bookstore, which renegotiated a 10-year lease with former city councilwoman Pat Russell in October, 1986 (in exchange for maintaining the building and carrying insurance on it), has formally asked L.A. Theatre Works to leave.

Michael Kearns and AIDS-related theater--the two are rapidly becoming synonymous. And for now, at least, that's OK with Kearns. "I feel a tremendous peace and serenity doing this work--because I'm doing something ," said the Los Angeles actor-director. "Also, there's a certain joy in taking responsibility for your life--as an artist and a gay person and someone who's been heartbroken." In the past few years, Kearns (whose touring repertoire includes "Dream Man" and "The Truth is Bad Enough"--which has played locally and across Europe)

It has taken some doing, but there may be a resolution coming on the 99-seat theater front--and what a war front it has been. Representatives of Actors' Equity Assn. and theater operators met Wednesday to review a new set of Equity proposals that, for the first time, would alter the union's controversial 99-seat theater plan.

For the second year in a row, Costa Mesa's Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory tops the list of nominations for the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle awards for distinguished achievement in theater for 1988. Altogether, SCR (whose 1987 production of "Misalliance" was the big winner at last year's awards) leads the number of nominations with a total of 13. The Los Angeles Theatre Center has nine, the Pasadena Playhouse eight and the Taper and the Ahmanson, two each.

Avant-garde dance theater duo Blue Palm, award-winning solo artist Jude Narita, the progressive East West Players, the innovative Collage Dance Theater--these are children's performers? They are at the 24th Street Theatre, for which the Glorious Repertory Company has recruited professional artists from adult theater as well as more traditional children's theater.

A taste of vaudeville, a dollop of dance, a dash of mime and mariachi, heaping helpings of comedy, classics and folklore, a workshop treat from a Tony Award-nominated set designer, a swordplay sampler--if you're hungry for a family theater experience this summer, you can fill up early at the first International Performing Arts Festival for Youth at USC this Saturday.

Talk about bad days. A tall, beautiful young Japanese American (Darling Narita) steps out of her L.A. apartment, and her landlord, angrily citing four months unpaid rent, swiftly locks her out, not allowing her to collect any possessions whatsoever. She has little time to argue, for she's off to audition for an important role in an upcoming film. Arriving early at a producer's home in a cul-de-sac below the Hollywood sign, she strikes up a conversation with a young homeless man (Peter Greene).

Consistently hailed for his literary character monologues and luminous stories of anomie, David Cale has long eschewed the identity politics that continue to dominate performance art. And so it's somewhat ironic that Cale is returning to Los Angeles--after a seven-year absence--on a bill called "Identities: An Evening of Solo Performance," at Cal State L.A.'s Luckman Fine Arts Complex Friday and Saturday. The evening also also features Jude Narita, Blondell Cummings and Ruben Sierra.